57 - Right Down The Line

Sports Editor
Wednesday, February 13, 1957
The Daily Reporter

TONIGHT may be the last high school basketball game for the Dundee Bulldogs.  The cagers of Head Coach Jack Reese who has had one of the worst seasons in many years, dropped its opening game in the county tournament and will meet the Tuscarawas Broncos in a Consolation Division fracas tonight.  If they lose they will end the season.

FOR DUNDEE BULLDOGS FANS it may be the last time they will see their high school fielding an athletic team of any kind since it is almost definite now that Dundee will consolidate with  Sugarcreek next year and will go under the name of the latter.

THE CONSOLIDATION PROJECT also has the Baltic Eagles included, but officials of that school signified that it does not wish to join Sugarcreek now, but eventually will.  A new school will be constructed in the vicinity of Sugarcreek when the program is fully completed.  At the beginning of the season Head Coach Reese submitted to us a roster listing 10 players including 4 Freshmen, 3 Sophomores and 3 Juniors as his Varsity.  Almost as soon as the season opened he lost 2 of those players, whittling his squad to only 8.  Before long 2 more fell by the wayside and he had only 6 players.  Adding one more player midway in the season the mentor finished out the schedule with 7 players.

Almost every team the Bulldogs played this year ran rough-shod over them in easy fashion.  The only team the Bulldogs whipped was United Local of Hanoverton and that in an overtime.  The game with Tusky, which is undergoing a rebuilding year, was very close, but other than those 2 games the rest were lopsided.  Monday night the Pups were slated to take another one on the chin when it met the Port Washington Purple Riders in the opening of the Tuscarawas County Class A Tournament.  But something went wrong and the Bulldog cagers refused to lay down and be trampled on.

Five of the gamest, determined boys that probably ever were listed as underdogs took the floor on Monday night and turned in sterling performances threatening in the early stages of the game, to post one of the biggest upsets in the school's cage history.  Fans were on the Dundee side all the way and when the little lads held a 17-12 lead at the end of the 1st quarter bedlam broke in Memorial Hall.  Port Washington, a little ruffled by those upstarts, finally realized their plight and settled down to breeze to an 85-53 victory.  Although the Purple Riders won by 32 points and led by a big margin midway in the 3rd stanza the Bulldog players never gave up.

We would like to congratulate the Pup players on their fine display of the will to win and fighting spirit.  Something that is lacking in many, larger communities.  We feel that if we never see another basketball game, which is very unlikely, we'll always remember that night when just plain old spirit spurred a team that lacked personnel and everything going with a good cage team into putting up a heart-warming battle.